Conversational Marketing Blog features BJ Cook's insights on digital marketing strategies and social media. As customer experiences cross over from web to mobile to offline; we assess who gets it and who needs some help.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Aside from everything that is going on in the industry right now from Geico beating Google out in the PR realm with their pseudo press release about winning the trademark infringement case to tons of reviews on Search Engine Strategies in San Jose to Yahoo Publisher's Network to the drama of Jason Calacanis's revenue from affiliate marketing, we are inundated with information from all outlets, whether it be media, co-workers, friends and family. But in the end, what is it that we do? You know when you meet someone new at a gathering or out at a bar and you get asked, "So what do you do for work? or So what do you do for a living?" The anticipation of just presenting your complicated role to them comes out as, "Hmm..." or "Well..." or my favorite is "Yeah, u know Google?" It starts off with I work at an interactive marketing firm, then gets broken down into department down to position with a brief "human meta description" of what I do on a daily basis, whether they have any idea or not what I am actually talking about. It's in the response though that reveals the layman's perception of who we are as an industry. "So you get sites ranked higher for keywords" or "Yeah you talk to Google with keywords" or "You work at Google?!"I'm interested in hearing what sort of responses people get when replying to that questions, so either email me or comment here and I'll make sure they all get up.thanks and enjoy your weekends!

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Note to all design firms, IT consultants, offshore firms and work-from-home-moms - Please Stop Spamming Me! I receive an unprecedented amount of spam about "submitting my site to search engines." PEOPLE, this is not 1994, GoTo.com doesn't exist and Infoseek's daily refresh has died.

The following is an email sent to me from someone at a large mobile service provider in the UK, Germany and Ireland. I would add the link, but I'm sure their PR firm would send me a letter, waste time thinking of creative ways to counter this bad mention and possibly try to reduce my organic positioning for their company. It just goes to show the lack of information out there or should I say the expansion of ignorance to educate oneself on the foundations of SEO or search marketing. Enjoy the thread.

"Submitting your website in search engines may increase your online sales dramatically. If you invested time and money into your website, you simply MUST submit your website online otherwise it will be invisible virtually, which means efforts spent in vain. If you want people to know about your website and boost your revenues, the only way to do that is to make your site visible in places where people search for information, i.e. submit your website in multiple search engines. Submit your website online and watch visitors stream to your e-business."

My Response To Them After Laughing Outloud:Lesson #1 - Don't Spam People about Submitting their sites to search engines, you just discredited yourself.Lesson #2 - Educate yourself about SEO.

Lesson #3 - Research who you are emailing. This is my side business and I am an SEO professional.

Lesson #4 - Optimize your own site!

thanks!

In conclusion, there are way more important studies and research I could be posting, but every now and then we receive something that shows us how important it is to educate those around us about search engine marketing.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Murthy vs. the Goliaths: The Power of Search at Work

The following research comes straight from Search Insider written by good ole Gordo from Enquiro. He elaborates on the use of strategic search marketing campaigns and how little business owners can withstand the heat of the large corporations. Even beating them out in the online arena is a reality, but for how long? Read more below.

As part of a client project, I was using Hitwise to determine who the category leader was in law firms. Who was grabbing the biggest slice of the potential 100 million visitor-per-month pie? After sorting through record search sites like Intelius, people finders like US Search and directory sites like Lawyers.com, I started looking for those huge firms that you would expect to find on top. Here are the usual suspects:

Baker & McKenzie: 3,246 attorneys, 69 offices around the world Jones Day: 1,822 Attorneys, 29 offices around the world Skadden: 1,822 Attorneys, 22 offices around the world Latham & Watkins: 1,627 Attorneys, 22 offices around the world

(The information on the firms comes from the Internet Legal Research Group and the firm's own sites.)

And the winner was....

The Law Office of Sheela Murthy.

Who?

Murthy.com is the official online home for a small immigration law firm based in Owings Mill, Md. There are just nine attorneys in an office that's probably smaller than the executive washroom at Baker and McKenzie. Yet, Ms. Murthy is kicking the big guys around the online block. And we're not talking a slight edge in traffic. According to Hitwise's market share report, Murthy.com captures 10 times the market share of these four huge firms combined.

I must admit, I was a little skeptical at first. So, I tried some quick checks on Alexa. Sure enough, the small firm from Owings Mill was decimating the big guys when it came to generating Internet traffic.

Frankly, I'm at a bit of a loss to explain this. The only explanation must be that the big guys don't really care. This is surprising, considering that well over a million people searched for some kind of lawyer on the Yahoo! network in May. And that's just on Yahoo! Google's numbers would easily double this. That's a minimum of 5 million potential clients up for grab every month, and the four largest firms in the United States haven't even optimized their title tags. You guessed it. Just the name of the firm shows in every case!

As search marketers, we often assume that the whole world knows about the power of search. Sometimes, it takes a blatant example like this to make us realize that a large part of the world is still waking up to the new reality of online marketing. And, as long as the giants are sleeping, there's still the opportunity for the Sheela Murthy's of the world to eat their lunch.

Come on, admit it: Aren't you going to be just a little bit sorry when those days are gone?

Gord Hotchkiss is the president of Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm. He loves to explore the strategic side of search and is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies and Ad:Tech.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Does that green bar on your Google Toolbar affect your online sales? Yooter InterActive Marketing ( http://www.yooter.com ) has discovered several threads and blogs that have noted that people check the Pagerank of the company before purchasing a product from the website.

It appears that a growing number of individuals are taking a quick peek at the Pagerank of the website before purchasing from an ecommerce site. If the site has little or no Pagerank the potential customer moves on to another website that offers similar products.

*Okay now, maybe within the SEO industry people who understand the principles of PageRank may make a good assumption that PageRank could lead you to believe a site is worthy enough to purchase from, but from working at a marketing firm and having people around me wonder what those green pixels are and how do I get it, leads me to believe this isn't that newsworthy. If you are an SEO and you are using PageRank to make an assumption like this, then re-evaluate your industry knowledge because any spam site can leverage links and garner a high PageRank. Believe It Or Not?

Blogger News Network's Lonnie B. Hodge will update posts on his China blog www.onemanbandwidth.com every thirty minutes and field questions relating to SEO, China, Literature and more. Site to offer free ads to corporate donors.*What a great idea!